Founded in 2010, World Food Books is a book service dedicated to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of quality international art and design journals, artists’ monographs, exhibition catalogues, artists’ editions, collected writings and printed ephemera.

As well as our book shop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service. We also have outposts at MUMA (Monash University Museum of Art) and Westspace, both also in Melbourne.

World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a program of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.

B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:

Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.

The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.

Press Release:“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986

World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.

The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.

At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, Cyclonopedia is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archaeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. Cyclonopedia is a Middle Eastern Odyssey, populated by archaeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth's tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.

This publication intersperses essays from scholars, historians, and thinkers with a selection of Allan Sekula’s seminal texts and excerpts from his private notebooks. The title is a reference to Okeanos—son of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth—who ruled over the oceans and water. Made and written across the decades, Sekula’s sketches and texts focus on maritime space and the material, economic, and ecological implications of globalization. In projects such as his magnum opus Fish Story (1989–95), or films like Lottery of the Sea (2006) and The Forgotten Space (2010), Sekula provided a view from and of the sea. This publication expands on these oceanic themes, seeking to honor the scope and complexity of the late artist-theorist’s work, and situate his ideas in current political, social, and environmental discourses.

The book is divided thematically: the section “Containerization” focuses on the sea as a site of infrastructural complication; Sekula’s work Black Tide / Marea negra (2002–3) is also revisited, which explores environmental violence and contamination as well as their social implications; a selection from Sekula’s personal drawings are accompanied by an essay by photo historian Sally Stein; various essays readdress Sekula’s legacy in the age of the Anthropocene; and a number of case studies by contemporary artists, writers, and thinkers examine ideas that overlap with Sekula’s and expand on his interests.

Addressing the current upswing of attention in the sciences, arts, and humanities to the new proposal that we are in a human-driven epoch called the Anthropocene, this book critically surveys that thesis and points to its limitations. It analyzes contemporary visual culture—popular science websites, remote sensing and SatNav imagery, eco-activist mobilizations, and experimental artistic projects—to consider how the term proposes more than merely a description of objective geological periodization. This book argues that the Anthropocene terminology works ideologically in support of a neoliberal financialization of nature, anthropocentric political economy, and endorsement of geoengineering as the preferred—but likely disastrous—method of approaching climate change. To democratize decisions about the world’s near future, we urgently need to subject the Anthropocene thesis to critical scrutiny and develop creative alternatives in the present.

“The idea of the Anthropocene needs to be eviscerated, and there is no one better suited to do it than T. J. Demos. In this sharp book Demos demonstrates that the Anthropocene thesis obscures a host of gross inequalities and the powerful interests behind them. Exploring examples (such as Google Earth) that support Anthropocene iconography, as well as a plethora of critical alternatives that decolonize and indigenize the Anthropocene, Demos offers a strong indictment of the violence of contemporary fossil capitalism. This manifesto should be on the bookshelves and in the back pockets of all climate justice activists.”—Ashley Dawson, Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center and College of Staten Island

“Against the Anthropocene is much more than simply ‘against.’ In this short, accessible, and fiercely written book, T. J. Demos shows how visual culture is implicated in the Anthropocene’s occlusions as well as a resource for conceptualizing—and mobilizing for—emancipatory alternatives. Deftly weaving together environmental accounts, scholarly arguments, and activist mobilizations, Demos makes an impassioned argument for new modes of thinking and representing the global environmental crisis that refuse the old fictions of the ‘social’ and the ‘natural.’ It is a book that shows how visual culture matters in our struggle for a just and livable future.”—Jason W. Moore, Associate Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University

“T. J. Demos is one of the most important critics of visual culture and its politics today. In this must-read book he makes a compelling argument not only against the discourse of the Anthropocene but also for an activist, critical, and intersectional culture of climate justice.”—Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University

“In Against the Anthropocene, T. J. Demos adds to the growing chorus of voices critical of a term that, while intending to sound an alarm about climate change, in fact obscures responsibility for our eco-disaster. Through his unique assessment of the role of the image in the Anthropocene, Demos highlights the work of contemporary artistic-activist projects that contest imagery designed to shape our response to environmental crisis. For those who think that we can’t envision our crisis or do anything about it, this wonderful book shows us all the ways in which visuality is being reinvented in support of a new, vibrant politics of collectivity.”—Imre Szeman, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta

“In this indispensable survey of visual culture’s intersection with the ongoing catastrophe of climate change, T. J. Demos makes its political stakes visible in new and exciting ways.”—Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

John Davis (16 September 1936 – 17 October 1999) was an Australian sculptor and pioneer of Environmental art. An Australian exponent of Arte povera, he famously developed a new mode of Site-specific art at the Mildura Sculpture Triennial in the early 1970s. John Davis established a critically acclaimed reputation as an influential sculptor and installation artist whose practice synthesised material diversity with an idiosyncratic concept of landscape and ecology. Davis travelled widely and exhibited regularly in America, Japan and Australia. As well as participating in the inaugural Mildura Sculpture Triennial, and he represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1978. Davis initially worked in wood and later in fibreglass and aluminium, becoming known for his multiples and for his distinctive formalist style. By 1973, Davis had become increasingly interested in conceptual, process-based and land art practices, and his mature works reflect his sensitivity to elemental forces, the organic world, and his profound connection to the ecological fragility and beauty of landscape.

"The Sculpture of John Davis traces the development of his work from the early wood carvings produced while he was a young man living in Mildura in the early 1960's through many changes of style, until he became a major Australian sculptor exhibiting in Venice, Delhi, Tokyo and Los Angeles. John Davis moved through a variety of styles and media from 'Organic Wood Carvings' to an interest in 'Repetitions, Grids, Multiples and Processes' before becoming fascinated by 'Low Technology and Cheap Materials', using 'Twigs, Paper and String'."

John Davis (16 September 1936 – 17 October 1999) was an Australian sculptor and pioneer of Environmental art. An Australian exponent of Arte povera, he famously developed a new mode of Site-specific art at the Mildura Sculpture Triennial in the early 1970s. John Davis established a critically acclaimed reputation as an influential sculptor and installation artist whose practice synthesised material diversity with an idiosyncratic concept of landscape and ecology. Davis travelled widely and exhibited regularly in America, Japan and Australia. As well as participating in the inaugural Mildura Sculpture Triennial, and he represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1978. Davis initially worked in wood and later in fibreglass and aluminium, becoming known for his multiples and for his distinctive formalist style. By 1973, Davis had become increasingly interested in conceptual, process-based and land art practices, and his mature works reflect his sensitivity to elemental forces, the organic world, and his profound connection to the ecological fragility and beauty of landscape.First edition of this major hard-cover monograph on Davis' work, deeply and personally researched with documentation of his works rarely seen anywhere else.

First French edition of this visionary book by Italian architect, published by Editions Parenthèses, Marseille, in 1980. This stunning over-sized landscape book reads like a manifesto/scrap-book of Soleri's Arcology (Architecture+Ecology), through his own words (here in French) and 120 pages of his intricate and fantastic architectural drawings.

"I am advocating a Lean Hypothesis about reality and a Lean Alternative to our materialistic culture. With the lean urban development I put tangibility to my conjecturing. Years ago I declared that Leanness is frugality fraught with sophistication. The gazelle is lean, i.e. frugality wrapped in grace.

Can anyone imagine a frozen tundra or a scorching Sahara colonized by millions of hermitages, single homes? A nightmarish American Dream incapable of supporting any kind of dignified life, let alone the evolution of a civilization. Is the exurban (ever-expanding suburban) metastasis a bejeweled dream? Of food and shelter, the two indispensable needs of life, shelter is the direct responsibility of planners; architects, urban planners, builders, developers, speculators, politicians, students ... time to wake up!" - Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti, Arizona

Through his work as architect, urban designer, artist, craftsman and philosopher, Paolo Soleri has been exploring the countless possibilities of human aspiration. The envisioned future taking shape in his mind has been expressed in various media. One outstanding endeavor is Arcosanti, an urban laboratory, constructed in the high Arizona desert. It attempts to demonstrate an alternative human habitat much needed in this increasingly perplexing world. This project also exemplifies his steadfast devotion to creating an experiential space to "prototype" an environment in harmony with man. Through his articulated philosophy "Arcology (Architecture+Ecology)", Soleri formulates a path that may aid us on our evolutionary journey toward a state of aesthetic, equity and compassion. The half century work of his broad-ranging and coherent intellect (so scarce in the age of specialization) has influenced many in the field in search of a new paradigm for our built environment. - Tomiaki Tamura

For her works, Katja Novitskova adapts images from online sources, referring to realities that lie beyond the capacities of the human eye but have long entered our lives as visual artifacts. Today, almost all aspects of human (and increasingly nonhuman) lives are registered or modeled by software on an environmental scale. Data collection and processing have transcended the limits of our planet and become the primary tools for navigating Earth and beyond. The artist book Dawn Mission explores this radically new articulation of the role of the image and how constant mediation gains an ecological dimension.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Katja Novitskova - Dawn Mission at Kunstverein in Hamburg. April 23–July 3, 2016.

Today almost all aspects of human—and increasingly nonhuman—lives are being modeled by software. Transcending the limits of our planet, data collection has become a fundamental tool with which to map the earth and beyond. Katja Novitskova’s catalogue If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes, published for the Estonian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, addresses emerging potentialities between visual culture, big-data-driven processes, and ecology. Rather than commenting on the observable moment, Novitskova transforms these visual manifestations of data into immersive environments that serve as glimpses of a world yet to come.

Copublished with the Center for Contemporary Arts, EstoniaDesign by Ott Metusala

Becoming Palm is the outcome of a conversation between two friends, artist Simryn Gill and anthropologist Michael Taussig, addressing the complexities of palm oil and “the enormous transformations, human, and ecological, that this crop engenders” (Taussig) in two disparate geographical locations, Southeast Asia and South America.

Electrifying, provocative, and controversial when first published thirty years ago, Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" is even more relevant today, when the divisions that she so eloquently challenges--of human and machine but also of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and location--are increasingly complex. The subsequent "Companion Species Manifesto," which further questions the human-nonhuman disjunction, is no less urgently needed in our time of environmental crisis and profound polarization.

Manifestly Haraway brings together these momentous manifestos to expose the continuity and ramifying force of Haraway's thought, whose significance emerges with engaging immediacy in a sustained conversation between the author and her long-term friend and colleague Cary Wolfe. Reading cyborgs and companion species through and with each other, Haraway and Wolfe join in a wide-ranging exchange on the history and meaning of the manifestos in the context of biopolitics, feminism, Marxism, human-nonhuman relationships, making kin, literary tropes, material semiotics, the negative way of knowing, secular Catholicism, and more.

The conversation ends by revealing the early stages of Haraway's "Chthulucene Manifesto," in tension with the teleologies of the doleful Anthropocene and the exterminationist Capitalocene. Deeply dedicated to a diverse and robust earthly flourishing, Manifestly Haraway promises to reignite needed discussion in and out of the academy about biologies, technologies, histories, and still possible futures.

Simians, Cyborgs and Women is a powerful collection of ten essays written between 1978 and 1989. Although on the surface, simians, cyborgs and women may seem an odd threesome, Haraway describes their profound link as "creatures" which have had a great destabilizing place in Western evolutionary technology and biology.Throughout this book, Haraway analyzes accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs. At once a social reality and a science fiction, the cyborg--a hybrid of organism and machine--represents transgressed boundaries and intense fusions of the nature/culture split. By providing an escape from rigid dualisms, the cyborg exists in a post-gender world, and as such holds immense possibilities for modern feminists. Haraway's recent book, Primate Visions, has been called "outstanding," "original," and "brilliant," by leading scholars in the field.

In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, but has also created a new form of investigative practice that bears its name. The group uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, as well as to cross-reference a variety of evidence sources, such as new media, remote sensing, material analysis, witness testimony, and crowd-sourcing.

In Forensic Architecture, Eyal Weizman, the group’s founder, provides, for the first time, an in-depth introduction to the history, practice, assumptions, potentials, and double binds of this practice. The book includes an extensive array of images, maps, and detailed documentation that records the intricate work the group has performed. Traversing multiple scales and durations, the case studies in this volume include the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere.

Weizman’s Forensic Architecture, stunning and shocking in its critical narrative, powerful images, and daring investigations, presents a new form of public truth, technologically, architecturally, and aesthetically produced. The practice calls for a transformative politics in which architecture as a field of knowledge and a mode of interpretation exposes and confronts ever-new forms of state violence and secrecy.

About the AuthorEyal Weizman is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London and a Global Scholar at Princeton University. A founder of Forensic Architecture, he is also a founding member of the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine. His books include Mengele’s Skull, The Least of All Possible Evils, and Hollow Land.

Endorsements“The investigative work of Eyal Weizman and his colleagues at Forensic Architecture is truly remarkable, breaking novel theoretical ground while actively supporting struggles for justice. Again and again, landscapes of power, violence, resistance and ecological stress are transformed in stunning new ways. Among the many revelations in these pages is a new mapping of the connections between climate-change, drought, drones and armed conflict. These are powerful analytic tools that will be indispensable to the construction of a new human rights framework.”—Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

“In many respects Forensic Architecture is the current reincarnation of Soviet Russia’s Factography, a collective enterprise that, in the 1920’s and 30’s, was geared towards the construction of facts, as opposed to merely documenting them. The difference between both endeavors, each similarly brazen in taking advantage of unprecedented advances of media technology, is that the facts that Forensic Architecture wishes to (re)construct are for the most part acts of state violence that the perpetrating state deliberately conceals. Those facts are registered in buildings (or traces thereof), which Weizman and his team equate both to photographs (sensors) and to tools for decoding other sensors (such as the clouds of smoke hovering over a bombed city). Analyzing the vast bank of images provided by social media in conflict zones through a computation of differential parallaxes, Forensic Architecture is fast becoming the most efficient visual machine against the suppression of evidence by the authors of crimes against humanity. Recent history tells us that its work will be evermore needed.”—Yve-Alain Bois

“In a world where environmental crimes are increasingly linked to human rights violations, Forensic Architecture has become an essential practice. Weizman and his team have understood how the tools of science and architecture can influence and transform the juridical system.”—Baltasar Garzón, former Spanish investigating judge and president of the human rights foundation FIBGAR